


Lycoris

by LightningEffect



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Coughing, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, One-Sided Attraction, One-Sided Love, Possibly Unrequited Love, Post-Infiltration, Pre-Infiltration, Reflections Comic, Suicide mention, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 11:20:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9179254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightningEffect/pseuds/LightningEffect
Summary: A bitter laugh bubbled up from her throat, fingers curling into fists and long nails digging into the palms hard. “Of course...who else.” But there was no possible way that the fantôme, that ghost full of nothing but hate and revenge, could ever feel anything in that sense for her in return. Either solution it seemed was impossible, she would die whether she wanted to or not.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to contribute to this pairing as it's one of my favorites and there really isn't enough content for it here. Though I'm slightly worried I may have written the two somewhat out of character, I tried my best to stick to what we know of them and most fan interpretations I've seen. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy!

A spasm raked through her whole body, causing shoulders to hunch forward, right hand shooting up in reflex to stifle a cough as she felt something crawl up her throat. The other hand tightening its grip on Widow’s Kiss as it was lowered onto her lap, fingers clutching the weapon hard enough that veins could be seen. There was an uncomfortable tingling sensation as the coughing continued for several moments before finally fading as the sniper caught her breath once more.

_‘Ah. Again?’_

This wasn’t the first time this week that she had found herself coughing, that hot, sticky feeling in her trachea. She hadn’t thought much of these occurrences, writing them off as a result of that punch from the gauntlet in the Museum. She had undergone an inspection for injury after that mission and been given the appropriate treatment, this coughing would disappear on its own once her body had fully healed.

And so golden eyes opened up as per usual, glancing down into the palm of her hand that had lowered from her mouth, revealing the purple-blue surface speckled with familiar red droplets...and something else. Something new that hadn’t been there the times before.

A raised eyebrow was the only change in expression as she took in the object, a thin curled petal in a vibrant red, dyed even darker with the blood.

Widowmaker released the vice grip on her gun, setting it aside on her bed and moving the cloth, with which she had been wiping it down, off her lap where it had fallen. Then picking up the petal between two fingers, holding it up to the light overhead and turning it first one way and then another. Fingers lowering and rubbing it between them after, feeling the familiar velvety surface of a flower, reassuring the assassin that it was real and had indeed come out of her mouth.

The only question remaining now was how? Petals did not simply get coughed up by people, they only came from flowers which had to grow within soil. Unless...there was a pause as the thought formed, a skeptical laugh flowed out before she shook her head, crushing the petal in her hand and standing to go to the bathroom to wash the blood away.

_Flowers do not grow inside of human beings, what a foolish idea._

…

 _"Rendez-vous avec la mort_... What did you need Reaper?”

The owl mask turned towards her as her voice filled the training room, disinterest clear in its tone. Reaper inclined his head in acknowledgement of her arrival before turning back to his target, raising his Hellfire shotguns once more and unloading them into the dummy until it was nothing but scraps of fabric. Once that was done he dropped them, the guns dematerializing in puffs of black smoke as he turned back to the sniper.

“We have a mission, Sombra will be coming along. We leave in an hour.”

He walked past Widowmaker without another word, exiting the training room to seemingly prepare himself for said mission. She nodded and left to do the same, pace increasing as the tingling feeling in her chest hinting at another coughing spasm started up. Not realizing that it had only started when Reaper had come into sight.

…

Another failure, though this time she could at least say it was Sombra’s fault more so. Widow hissed in annoyance just thinking about it again as she made her way back to her room after their punishment. Although she couldn’t feel the pain as sharply as regular humans, it was still there dimly. A throbbing that resounded through the whole body, an ache that faded in and out. There was a small cough at first as the throbbing increased, and then a harder one that shook all through her.

Widow shrugged it off and kept walking, mind traveling back to the mission and replaying every detail, searching for the mistakes. She had been too lost in her thoughts that she didn’t realize the presence before her at first until she nearly ran into him. Stopping just short of bumping head to chest, she halted and looked up, falling back onto her heels lightly.

“Reaper. Is there something you need?”

The man was standing outside her room as if waiting for her, for what reason she knew not. Reaper stared at her silently at first, those empty sockets of his mask not revealing anything but black, before he reached a hand out.  Clawed finger coming to wipe at the corner of her mouth, holding up the finger to her to reveal the blood he had cleaned off. Hand remaining in front of her face, obviously expecting an answer to the unasked question of why she was coughing up blood.

_“Ah…”_

Just what she needed, Reaper finding out about the coughing and reporting her for not admitting to not being in top condition which might result in full reconditioning for what could be taken as insubordination.

“Tsk..it is nothing. Just a cough, it will go away.”

She pushed his hand aside, trying to brush it off so that he might not think much of it, and unlocking her door, stepping inside and turning back to bid the fellow agent _adieu_.. Only she did not get that far as another spasm shook through and she doubled over, covering her mouth as it got harder.

Two things happened in that moment: Widowmaker felt her knees buckle as the throbbing returned, louder and more vivid than before and Reaper moved forward, catching an arm around her waist to support her before she fell to the ground completely.

He stepped into her room, leading her to sit on the bed and letting go of her, instead watching her as she kept coughing with what could have been considered concern perhaps if one could actually see his face.

 _“Widow-”_ He began, obvious irritation in the deep voice, not believing that ‘it’s only a cough’ excuse now. “How long has this been going on for?”

She took in a shaky breath as the coughs subsided for a moment, not wanting to look into her hand as she knew what she’d find there. Blood.

“A week, perhaps two. It is from the gauntlet, it did worse damage than thought, but I have taken the medicine and treatment required. It will heal.”

He grabbed her wrist, yanking it away from her mouth and staring at the blood upon her gloved hand, grip tightening though as he saw the petals. This time there were four or five of them, as if from a whole flower. The delicate red furls curling up on themselves, more identifiable now as they were haphazardly clustered together in her palm.

A Spider lily. _Lycoris Radiata_ to be exact.

“And you’re going to tell me that you’ve been coughing up _flowers_ because of the gauntlet as well?” Reaper growled, clawed nails starting to dig into her exposed skin, lacking the gauntlets she had removed earlier that might have guarded her flesh otherwise.

She yanked her arm away with a slight struggle, petals falling to the ground, scowling at him, _“I do not need your pity fantôme.”_ She wiped at the lines of blood already forming from where his glove had pierced.

 _“It isn’t pity spider.”_ He countered, taking her wrist and ripping off some fabric from her bedsheet, using it to wrap around the scratches. “It’s concern. You can’t do your job right if you’re hiding some sickness, and if you fuck things up on the next mission, you’re not the only one who suffers, remember?”

Widowmaker scoffed, pulling her arm back towards her and cradling it as he let go finally, “Concern? Of course I should expect only concern when it affects yourself fantôme, I will not ‘fuck up’ as you put it, I always hit my mark sickness or not.”

Reaper narrowed his eyes, though you couldn’t tell due to the mask and sighed, “Despite your confidence, I’m still taking you to figure out what this is. Come willingly or I _will_ drag you.”

With an obvious frown directed at the fellow Talon agent, she reluctantly stood and followed after the man, heading to the infirmary.

…

“What an interesting disease!”

The doctor on duty exclaimed as he looked at the X-ray scans he was holding.

After an initial questioning over the symptoms which Widowmaker had tried to tone down as simply a cough from internal bleeding maybe, and then an angry glare in her direction from Reaper leading to her mentioning the flower petals, the doctor had decided to take some X-rays and see what was going on within her body.

What showed up wasn’t something he had ever seen before, nor anything the two assassins had either. There seemed to be actual flowers growing within Widow’s body, inside her lungs and branching upwards towards her trachea. This was where the petals seemed to be coming from.

“How did they get there?” Reaper queried,  shaking the man out of his awe and prompting him to look back at the two pairs of eyes boring into his skull.

“Oh, ah well...I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Actual flowers growing inside the human body! I didn’t think the body was a fertile environment for something like this hmm.” He looked lost in thought a moment before nodding to himself as he set his clipboard with the scans down. “I’ll call around to some of our other Talon medical associates and see if any of them have ever come across such a case and get back to you.”

…

They didn’t hear back from him for another week. Another week full of random coughing spasms, interrupting the sniper in her usual routine much to her annoyance. During the midst of sparring sessions with Reaper, while going over strategy, even when she was trying to eat. The latter being the most painful experiences as the food wouldn’t want to go down, as if the vines from the flowers were closing off both pipes.

When the call finally came to report to the infirmary it certainly wasn’t soon enough. Surprisingly the fantôme had chosen to join her on her way there, standing in a corner of the room and folding his arms, silently watching.

The doctor glanced between the two, swallowing a bit nervously for some reason before finally starting on his discovery. “Well...it seems that our Japanese location has seen or..rather heard of this condition at least. They called it Hanahaki disease.”

“That is good, _non_? How do we stop it?”

He seemed visibly more nervous now, “That’s the thing...it’s very difficult to cure. You see, it’s an illness born from one-sided love. Basically the patient’s unrequited love takes on a physical manifestation as a flower that blooms within their body, slowly growing more and causing them to cough up petals until eventually it suffocates them, either from the petals or the bloom within ripping through the lungs and reaching the heart or both.”

“Love? But the only man I… _non,_ _she_ ever loved was…”

_‘Gérard.’_

Her voice trailed off a moment, breathing in a moment before continuing, “That was not unrequited though, he certainly loved _her_ back. And I do not feel true emotions anymore, so how could I possibly love someone? You said there was a solution, what is it?”

Reaper shifted in his corner, the sound of his outfit’s fabric rustling along the wall filling the silence that followed the sniper’s questions.

The doctor sighed and shook his head, “I don’t know. Yes I did say that didn’t I… the first is to have the feelings reciprocated by the one you love, but seeing as the only person that might have been is dead… Well the second option is surgically removing the flowers but that has some side effects. It would result in you completely losing the feelings of love for the person, and possibly even losing all feelings of empathy. But if the flowers have progressed too far into other vital parts of your body, it might be too late for even surgery. We will need to do another X-ray to see how much they’ve grown since the last time.”

…

From the doctor’s face, things didn’t seem well. He was sporting a frown and very noticeable tenseness in his shoulders and the way he walked towards the two, once again in their spots on the chair and in the corner.  
  
“Well doctor?” She prompted when it didn’t seem like he was going to say anything a few minutes later.

“Oh...i… it seems the vines have started to pierce into the internal membrane of your lungs and wrap around your trachea. If we risk operating, there’s a chance that removing them from where they’re in the membrane could leave punctures in your lungs and cause removal of a lung, if we’re lucky. Otherwise you could lose the use of both which well...would result in death, or they could end up crushing your trachea.” There was silence again as the doctor looked everywhere but for the golden eyes looking straight at him.

“They seem to be growing at a rapid rate and we don’t yet know if they might grow even more during the operation.” He sighed and rubbed a hand across his jaw, “I’m sorry ma’am but we can’t do anything.” Finally daring a glance at her face.

By this point, the words had properly processed through her mind and she had lowered her gaze into her lap, staring at her hands. So...it would seem she was like to die?

Ha...as if dying once wasn’t enough.

…

There had been moments of silence following the doctor’s words before Widowmaker got up and stalked out of the room as fast as her legs could take her without it becoming her straight up running. She was going to die and there was nothing to be done about it. If Talon did somehow bring her back what was to stop this weird disease from appearing again?

What had even caused it? Was her body starting to remember _him_ and pine after him? No, he had been long dead by her own hand..and that woman no longer existed. They had made sure of that, reconditioning her until she could no longer answer the question of who she even was.

Though some of her memories of that past life lingered it wasn’t enough to make Amélie Lacroix ever return. So who could she have somehow come to love? There wasn’t anyone else, no one she interacted enough with to…

The spider paused in the hall staring ahead as eyes widened, the image of a bone-white owl mask flickering in her mind.

_Non-_

But who else could it be?

_Non--_

She did not know love anymore, she did not _have_ emotions, she did not _feel!_ Only when she killed, only then did she feel _anything_ \- but...was that really true?

A bitter laugh bubbled up from her throat, fingers curling into fists and long nails digging into the palms hard. “Of course...who else.” But there was no possible way that the _fantôme_ , that ghost full of nothing but hate and revenge, could ever feel anything in that sense for her in return. Either solution it seemed was impossible, she would die whether she wanted to or not.

Perhaps it would be better to die on her own terms rather than wait for this disease to kill her then?

…

She packed only the essential items. Widow’s Kiss, some rations of food, a tent in case it took several days to reach the goal, and a coat in case she needed to go around less noticeably. Waiting until night fell and the guard would be switching out, having worked in the organization for so long she knew the details of these mundane routines perfectly.

It wasn’t hard leaving, of escaping the base in the middle of the night without anyone realizing yet. Once a far enough distance she had stopped to cut out the tracker embedded within her wrist so they wouldn’t be able to follow her.

She was on her way, going to the one place that the old part of her longed to see before she decided to put an end to it all. It only took a few weeks to get there, luckily Talon had been unable to track her as of yet, so everything was going according to plan.

 _'Right in time for Christmas,'_ She mused.

The timing hadn’t been planned, in fact she had completely forgotten about the holiday until she came across decorations and lights adorning every street in the city she had stopped in to restock on food. She peered down at the tombstone and the letters that shaped the name at the top, pulling her coat closer around her.

_Gérard Lacroix._

  
“It has been a long time… I wasn’t sure if they’d bury you here like you had wanted, but they did. I suppose it is fitting I see you last before dying myself, as you saw me…”

She crouched down a moment, setting down the single red rose upon the grave that she had also gotten when in the city, standing once more and smiling sardonically.

“If only you could see your Amélie now Gérard, I wonder what you would think of her? Could you still love her knowing what she has become? What she has done? It is not only your blood that stains her hands now-”

A sharp inhale cut off her next words, and she crumpled to her knees in the snow, coughing harder than she ever had before. Aching, throbbing, knives stabbing into her every being, a fiery yet cold burning running through her chest..lungs..throat..every breath.

Petals fluttered out, covering the snow before the grave and dying it red as she knelt there, both hands on the ground as they ran her throat raw. Blood and lycoris everywhere she could see, but it didn’t stop, a sharper feeling in her throat of bile rising and then she was retching out everything she had eaten in the past hours. It kept going until she was certain her stomach’s contents had been completely emptied out, but the disgusting reaction kept on until she was gasping for air and almost drowning in her own blood.

Was this how she would die then? Death by vomiting and coughing up Spider Lilies? Irony was a bitter mistress she thought weakly in between the convulsions of alternated heaving and hacking. Of all flowers that it could have been, it was this one, the plant which was often used in medicine to actually stop coughs...and the flower of separation and death.

Her mind pulled up a memory of a story she had been told once by someone though she couldn’t recall who now, somehow between all this pain it soothed her in a way.

_“You know why a Spider Lily is called the flower of separation? It’s because the leaves and the flowers can never meet. The flowers can only blossom when the leaves are all withered away. They miss one another to grow the sprout and bloom the flowers, but in the end they leave their yearning for each other and never unite. Isn’t it beautiful? Even in death, they seem to miss each other like lovers.”_

Fitting she supposed, the spider in the name even more so.

The convulsions continued for what seemed like hours now, she had lost count and strength, losing balance and falling to lie in the snow on her side, most likely in her own mess. Each shudder leaving her even more breathless than the last. She began to wonder when it would finally stop and she’d be granted the peace of death, but it seemed this disease planned to prolong her suffering as long as possible. It must have been karma for all the people she had killed over the years.

Just when she was contemplating trying to crawl to her gun and end it faster...they suddenly stopped. The shallow breaths slowly evened out as the cold feeling of a large hand touched upon her back, rubbing it, soothing her. The hand moved to brush back her ponytail and then scoop her up and away from the blood bath.

She could feel strong arms around her, keeping her close to the chest of this person. Her eyes weakly opening to look up, surprised to find it was Reaper.

“So...Talon has….finally tra...cked me down eh?” Widow managed in a rasp. It would be death by torture it seemed, though nothing Talon did to her could compare to the pain she had just undergone.

His voice rumbled out, vibrating through his chest and into her body as he held her closer, “No. I came after you alone.” His tone was as if her question had been ridiculous.

Widowmaker stared at him tired and confused, “Why..?”

“I left to come after you. Sombra did as well, we’ve been searching for you.”

That answer didn’t seem to satisfy her for she kept staring, a faint frown on her lips even after having nearly died.

Reaper seemed to sigh but continued, “I’ve been planning to leave for some time, I was sick of Talon treating me like some expendable mutt even though we have been its only and most useful possessions. And…” He stopped, searching her face and taking in the state of disorder she was in, “I was concerned for you.”

 _"Concern_ fantôme? That...I’d fuck up your escape…?”

The man tightened his hold on her, seemingly annoyed by her sarcastic response, using his own words against him. “No, concern for you. I...was worried for you. If you died…”

“What’s this? Actual...emotion..? From you? The...Reaper…?” She would have laughed if she could, if her throat wasn’t in shreds. “How funny..”

Reaper gritted his teeth, “Yes..” He didn’t say anything further, switching to cradling her in one arm as he grabbed up her bag and kicked around the snow to hide all the blood and petals that had littered it. Hiding the trace of anyone having visited except for that single red rose. Carrying her away into the cold night without another word.

She was too tired to notice the movement by then, losing consciousness, eyes sliding shut from all the blood loss and pain. But she could have swore she heard the sound of a whisper and the press of lips against her forehead before everything went dark.

_“Te amo."_

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since I'd first heard of the Hanahaki disease, I'd always wanted to write something about it. But unfortunately I fell out of writing fanfiction for the longest of times, until recently I got inspired to try again, for this pairing especially. I apologize if my writing's a bit rusty as a result or if this dragged on too long, I didn't want to do something more than a chapter as I wasn't sure I could expand on it much and it's been a great many years since I've written like this properly. 
> 
> I hope you think this was a well enough story and depiction for these two as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you for taking the time to read if you do, I truly appreciate it!
> 
> *The story about Spider Lilies is an excerpt from The Bride of the Water God


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